Dad Admits He Doesn’t Want To Take His Kid To Father-Daughter Dances Because They’re ‘Creepy’

Kim Wong-Shing is a staff writer at LittleThings. Her work spans beauty, wellness, pop culture, identity, food, and other topics. She is a contributing writer at NaturallyCurly, and her work has also appeared in HelloGiggles, Lifehacker, Wear Your Voice Magazine, and other outlets. She grew up in Philadelphia, attended Brown University, and is now based in New Orleans.

Father-daughter dances are a time-honored tradition at many grade schools. But to one dad, these dances are a “creepy” tradition that should definitely be questioned.

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The dad wrote in to the Reddit community, explaining that he feels hesitant to attend a father-daughter dance with his child when she gets old enough.

“They are creepy and sexualize the relationship between daughter and father,” he wrote. “The whole thing just grosses me out and makes my skin crawl. I love my daughter with all my heart, but I don’t want to date her.”

The dad told his wife about his feelings, and she “lost it.” She said he would be taking away an important bonding experience with his daughter if he didn’t attend the dances.

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So the dad turned to social media to settle their argument, and… commenters couldn’t agree! As the dad pointed out, some daddy-daughter dances are definitely creepy — like “purity balls” in which daughters pledge their virginity to their fathers. But are regular school father-daughter dances really as creepy as purity balls? That’s what this whole debate hinged on, as you’ll see below.

To this dad, daddy-daughter dances and purity balls seem creepy in similar ways.

“The whole thing just grosses me out and makes my skin crawl,” he said. “I love my daughter with all my heart, but I don’t want to date her. I also don’t want to reinforce weird gender and patriarchal stereotypes in my [daughter’s] young mind.”

Commenters were more than happy to chime in with their own opinions. Unlike many viral social media posts (where everybody piles on with the same viewpoint over and over), this one was actually very up in the air!

After all the debate, the dad returned to the post with some more thoughts. He admitted that maybe “sexualized” is too strong of a word, but the Valentine’s Day daddy-daughter dance did have romantic overtones.

Also, he pointed out that he’s a stay-at-home dad who doesn’t need a special event to bond with his kid.

“I feel like a lot of people here think I believe these things are bad because I think dancing with my daughter is sexual,” he added. “That’s not true. I dance with her now. I’m affectionate. I hug and kiss her. I nap and cuddle with her. It’s my favorite thing in the world. However, when she’s older some of that stuff becomes less appropriate.”

He finished by thanking everyone for the food for thought:

“Whatever your opinion on it, just know I’m gonna keep doing the best I can to be a good dad, dances or not.”